"Boom—"
The deafening explosion echoed through the underground chamber as jet-black crystal shards scattered like a torrential downpour. Neji flickered among the crystal clusters, his silver-white hair whipping wildly in the surging chakra. His eyes remained fixed on the violent blue steam ahead—Danzo, having opened the Gate of Wonder, was like a ferocious beast unleashed from its shackles, every punch carrying enough force to shatter mountains and split stone.
"Brat, do you think these little tricks can stop me?" Danzo's voice came from within the blue steam, hoarse and filled with bone-chilling coldness. His lone eye locked precisely onto Neji's position through the rainbow light refracted by the crystals.
Neji did not answer. His hands flashed through seals. "Crystal Release: Thousand Illusion Mirror Formation!"
In an instant, the crystal surfaces throughout the underground chamber simultaneously glimmered with eerie silver light. Countless reflections of Neji appeared upon every crystal shard, real and false, illusion and reality impossible to distinguish. Danzo's fists smashed through one crystal mirror after another, yet he could never seize Neji's true body.
"Yin Release: Soul-Eroding Touch!" Danzo suddenly changed tactics. His right hand formed seals at an extremely twisted angle, and black chakra spread from his palm like a living thing. Wherever it passed, the crystals rapidly melted as though corroded by powerful acid.
Neji's pupils contracted sharply. The aura emitted by that black chakra filled him with instinctive disgust—it was not ordinary Yin Release, but something mixed with twisted, fallen spiritual contamination. Within his Sea of Consciousness, the Primordial Bagua Diagram began to turn on its own, dissolving the invading negative energy one strand at a time, yet waves of stabbing pain still traveled through his nerve endings.
"Danzo, where did you learn these vile techniques?" Neji demanded sharply as he retreated, avoiding the spreading black